Europe has perhaps been in crisis for longer than we think, given that the elite driven move to marketization and a neo-liberal model has even less of a mandate at a pan-EU level than in individual countries, not least because of the EU’s notorious democratic deficit. As long as structural funds were building roads and Europe benefited from the debt-fueled boom, people could still be swung in line, often reluctantly behind the project, with elites able to draw on some of the population’s large reserves of pro-European idealism. Now, with the crisis, all the contradictions have been driven to the fore and elite Europe and popular Europe have clearly come apart. Europe once signified modernity and prosperity to its new members. Now it is more associated with structural adjustment, savage cuts in services and what is effectively blackmail. European idealism may survive but can no longer place its hopes in the EU. A lot of this is summed up in this great little video from Greece (here).